


The Heart in Reverse

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Trope Bingo Round 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1584338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Earth, the Doctor learns to wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart in Reverse

**Author's Note:**

> For the dw_allsorts prompt: the heart in reverse  
> This was also written for the trope_bingo prompt: unrequited love / pining
> 
> Italicized lines from The Wait  
> by Rainer Maria Rilke  
> Translated by A. Poulin

  
**_the wait_ **

 

The laboratory assigned to him by UNIT is a small, oddly shaped-room, replete with test tubes, thin metal tools, and torn scraps of equations. The air smells of chemicals and burning things.

A tall, blue box is shoved into one corner. There is an unbounded world of space inside, a thousand rooms and feather down mattresses, soft perfumes, and velvet pillows –

But when he needs sleep (rare) he chooses a surplus, military cot folded against the wall in the opposite corner.

It's slightly too short and its bony, metal frame pokes through the loose green canvass. It gives him a backache. Sometimes he falls asleep in his chair instead, not by choice. His eyes close when he's distracted. That's all.

He will stand against the box some lonely nights with one hand pressed against its rough not-wood. It doesn't hum or vibrate. It is a machine with its switch turned to off. It is something else which he does not remember. He moves away and busies his hands and his mind with twisted bits of wire and primitive capacitors which will never do what he wants them to do. Not exactly. Not quite.

It's quiet on the base during the late watches. Outside there are stars and soldiers marching squares to keep star-sent secrets safe.

Inside, he could be the king of infinite space. Instead, he makes do.

 

**_it is_ _life in slow motion_ **

 

"I brought you tea," Jo Grant says. She perches on a too-tall chair swinging her too-short legs back and forth, back and forth.

He is cross with lack of sleep and a dream he doesn't remember. He has an experiment to work out. If he could fix the machine and fly away from this inexorable exile then things would straighten themselves out. The ache in his back would subside. The tension in his shoulders would release. He would have more patience.

Once he's done this UNIT task he'll have some of his own time again, his own small freedom, and he'll be able to work on the ship. The machine. The thing that is keeping him trapped.

The tea starts going cold on the counter. Jo picks the mug up and sips from it herself. She has a sweet sort of practicality. She leaves at some point, but then she must have returned later. He is deeply immersed in his wires and doesn't notice.

But, when he finishes, exhausted, there is another tea on the counter, cold, but stiff with sugar as he likes it. And a pile of sandwiches. And a flower.

He holds it between his fingers. Periwinkle blue. It is such a delicate thing.

 

 

**_it's the heart in reverse_ **

 

Elizabeth Shaw comes back one blazing summer day.

UNIT is having a picnic. Jo laughs and lounges on a checkered blanket. She brought sandwiches (egg, ham, cheese) and an alien-looking concoction of jelly and celery based on a recipe from her aunt Fiona, "who ran away to America with this businessman. It was a scandal."

"Is it supposed to jiggle like that?" Yates asks.

"I don't know. I think so. She says it's all the rage in Philadelphia."

The UNIT men dubiously sample the shuddering monstrosity. They offer strained complements and try to hide their suspiciously slimy napkins. Finally, Benton, accidentally mistakes the so-called salad for an alien threat and everyone is relieved.

The grass is green, but too dry and crisp. It crackles under the blanket. Ants invade the basket.

Liz sits with the Brigadier and they talk quietly while the enlisted men exchange gossip. Some of the men brought along their wives. Their children. Little people who run around smiling. They smile for the Doctor because he is very impressive when he pulls coins or juggles, but then their parents' call them back and he knows that he is not the most important thing in their worlds. That is soothing. That is nostalgic. That is another missing thing he doesn't remember.

Benton wants to take Bessie for a spin.

It's only a machine. He shouldn't fight so hard for lifeless things. Not when his friends scowl and frown at him for being a spoil-sport. He doesn't understand them. He doesn't understand himself.

Why _should_ he care so much about a lifeless piece of metal and gears and bright paint?

Sunshine yellow. Sky blue.

He gives up the keys and stretches back on the crinkling blanket. Jo laughs.

 

 

**_it's a hope-and-a-half_ **

 

"Look, they've sent me a new dematerialisation circuit. And my knowledge of time travel law and all the dematerialisation codes, they've all come back. They've forgiven me. They've given me back my freedom!"

"I suppose you'll be rushing off, then."

"No, not straight away, Jo. Of course not. I've got to build a new force field generator first."

And something else. And something else. He stays in the console room and shuns the corridors. It is a machine, a vessel, a tool. It is the freedom of the universe, but something is missing.

Trips pass.

"The Brigadier wanted to know if we'd been to visit Jamie and... he couldn't remember the girl's name, Zoë or Victoria. He wasn't certain."

The Doctor's eyebrows furrow. "Having a working TARDIS does not make me an intergalactic errand runner. If the Brigadier wants to talk to these people he can arrange his own meeting."

"But they're your friends!" Jo says. "The Brigadier was telling me about... well, no, that's a lie, Liz was telling me about them and I guess he told her or maybe it was Benton." Jo looks momentarily flummoxed. "But whoever it was, the Brigadier was asking that last time we spoke and they do sound lovely. Can we meet them?"

The Doctor shakes his head, trying to clear it. And something else. And something else.  

"I think you've got your stories a bit confused, Jo," he says as kindly as possible.

She frowns. "I was certain those were the right names."

The Doctor pats her absently and goes back to the console. It isn't calibrated right yet. There is some error in the command circuits. It keeps landing in unexpected places (bleak moorlands, deserted satellites). Almost like it has a mind of its own.

Ridiculous

 

 

**_too much and too little at once._ **

 

He's afraid, he knows that. He's afraid of facing what's been taken, lost. Maybe irrevocably.

A keen, deep part of his soul has a gap in it. And he is afraid that if he runs too far from Earth, and from Sarah-Jane and the Brigadier, and Bessie, and his pokey laboratory where a dried out periwinkle is still pressed between two clean sheets of paper –

if he runs too far and grasps the freedom he can almost taste, almost touch, he is afraid that he'll lose the missing piece forever.

In the end, he has to act, and the radiation strips away the veil.

He was happy on Earth. He will be happier between the stars, but that does not diminish the laughter or the friendship:

Liz furiously arguing his method and driving him to higher standards. The long nights he spent listening to the record player Jo left him, to keep him from being lonely (she did love the Beatles). Helping Sarah-Jane edit her stories for sale and verbally sparing with the Brigadier on her behalf when she was censored. The challenge of picking apart the Master's increasingly ridiculous campaigns (he hadn't spent so much time with another Time Lord in centuries.) That time Benton and Yates convinced him down to the pub…

It all fades to black. He remembers everything.

The TARDIS.

She helps him find a way home to say goodbye and thank you to the people who kept him safe during her wait.


End file.
